Amazon Wants to Decide the Price for Android Apps  →

Jason Kincaid on TechChrunch:

The biggest departure from the mobile app stores we’ve grown accustomed to involves pricing. Unlike Apple’s App Store and Android Market, where developers can set their price to whatever they’d like, Amazon retains full control over how it wants to price your application. The setup is a bit confusing: upon submitting your application, you can set a ‘List Price’, which is the price you’d normally sell it at. Amazon will use a variety of market factors to determine what price it wants to use, and you get a 70% cut of the proceeds of each sale (which is the industry standard). In the event that Amazon steeply discounts your application, or offers it for free, you’re guaranteed to get 20% of the List Price.

Sounds like centralized, corporate management to me. Obviously Amazon wants their Android App Store to be hugely successful and so they’re acting as if they know what’s best for each developer’s app. And maybe they do.

But perhaps not. As Dan Frommer writes on Business Insider:

In theory, Amazon will be able to use whatever sales algorithms it has to generate the most possible revenue.

So perhaps the price of an app in Amazon’s Android App Store will be dynamic, with app prices fluctuating up or down on a case-by-case basis based on popularity, who it is browsing the store, etc.

And surely Amazon has set some sort of guideline to prohibit a developer from suggesting an outrageous ‘List Price’. I mean, if the developer is guaranteed at least 20% of the price they suggest upon submission of their app, then why not suggest $1,000,000?

Amazon Wants to Decide the Price for Android Apps

Apps vs. Songs  →

Horace Dediu’s fascinating reports on the total number of apps downloaded from the iOS App Store compared to the total number of songs downloaded from iTunes.

In short? Apps are taking off like crazy. It took the App Store half the time it took iTunes to reach 10 billion downloads. Also:

The amazing story of this chart is not that apps are running at above 30 million download per day, but that the figure is growing. Growth like this is hard to get one’s mind around. Not only are downloads increasing, but the rate of increase is increasing.

Update: Ahmad Alhashemi asked me on Twitter if it matters how many of those 10 billion apps are free and how many are paid. It matters in the fact that total apps downloaded to date would surely be less than 10 billion if there were no free apps (which is the point I’m highlighting here). But, if you read Horace’s report, he’s making a point that iOS users have an increasing investment in their device due to the amount of apps they’ve downloaded and use.

Apps vs. Songs

[Sponsor] Pear Note for Mac  →

Pear Note helps you create more complete, understandable notes on your Mac. Typed notes are blended with recorded audio, video, and slides to create notes that make more sense when you need them most. Think of it as augmented note-taking, with your typed notes being improved by other inputs such as audio or video. For instance, if a piece of your typed notes is incomplete, just click on that text to jump straight to that point in the audio recording.

Pear Note is available in or out of the Mac App Store.

[Sponsor] Pear Note for Mac

Paste Interactive  →

Many thanks to Paste for once again sponsoring this week’s RSS Feed to promote their suite of productivity and project management web apps.

Paste is a company with a lot of personality and a huge commitment to excellence. If you build websites, work with a team, or are on the hunt for a better project management software, then check out their suite of apps.

As I mentioned last time, their app Jumpchart is especially worth a look. It’s a web app to help you build, organize, swap, edit, and agree upon the content, design, and information architecture of a new site. Then it’ll export your outline and pages of content to HTML (or even to WordPress). As someone who works with a team building websites, I know just how difficult the building and organizing (and then agreeing upon) of content can be. Jumpchart seeks to solve precisely that issue.

Paste Interactive

FlexTime, LaunchBar, Spaces and AppleScript. Oh my!  →

Justin Blanton is awesome:

As of late I’ve had a terrible time concentrating, on anything. So, I did what any self-respecting computer geek can’t help but do, and rationalized further procrastination by telling myself I was going to create a new, usable workflow. The end result of this little productivity tangent is a combination of FlexTime, LaunchBar, Spaces and AppleScript…

FlexTime, LaunchBar, Spaces and AppleScript. Oh my!

How to Pronounce “Blanc”

Growing up we always knew when a telemarketer was calling because they’d pronounce our last name wrong. But it never really occurred to me until recently that many of you may also be pronouncing my last name wrong by mistake as well.

Though my last name is spelled the same as the legendary Mel Blanc’s (no relation) it is not pronounced the same. Mel’s last name was pronounced “blank“. As in a blank canvas.

My last name is pronounced “blonk“. As in Mont Blanc. This is an americanized version of the way the French say it (my great grandfather grew up in a small town along the France/Italian border). Though a proper French pronunciation with a proper French accent would leave off the “c” altogether. I do not have a french accent.

Phonetically, it is spelled: “blah ng k”.

And so now you know.

How to Pronounce “Blanc”

“Android’s Marketshare May Have Just Peaked.”  →

Thoughtful (as always) article from Marco Arment on the “iPhone versus Android fight”. In short, Marco’s muse is that it hasn’t been iPhone versus Android, but actually iPhone versus Verizon.

I know that in my circles all my friends — save one — with an Android phone have it because it was free or because they didn’t want to leave Verizon: “It’s not an iPhone,” they say, “but it’s still pretty cool. I mean, it’s got a touch screen and all.”

“Android’s Marketshare May Have Just Peaked.”

Brilliant At The Basics of Business (PDF)  →

One hundred great, great one-liners of advice and food for thought from Nicholas Bate. Numbers 15, 52, 59, 65, 67, 89, 91, 95, 96, and 99 all really struck a chord with me.

But especially numbers 13,

Stop wishing. Start selling. Stop imagining. Pick up the phones. Stop playing with pipeline percentages. Ring every account and ask for business.

34,

A High Performance Business Team is not about having gone white water rafting together. Nor a list of ‘core values’. Nor a fancy mission statement on the wall. Although any of these might help. It is about absolute and total loyalty to each other. Never talk negatively about a team colleague who is not present; talk to him or her.

and 97:

You may well eventually be able to spend three days out of five on the golf course, but don’t make that your goal. Most entrepreneurs work hard, think, develop relationships, sell, chase money, innovate, have fun, pitch, drink coffee. And sometimes play golf.

(Via Daniel Jalkut.)

Brilliant At The Basics of Business (PDF)

Verizon’s iPhone

It is, for all intents and purposes, the same iPhone that people on AT&T are using except it works on Verizon. There is no Verizon branding nor any special new features to the iPhone. Except one: the mobile hotspot.

The only software that will come “pre-installed” on the Verizon iPhone is what Verizon is calling their Mobile Hotspot app. Though, fortunately, it’s found in the Settings and not as its own app which launches from the springboard.

You can use the mobile hotspot to give internet to up to five computers (or iPads). And while the mobile hotspot is a great feature, on Verizon’s CDMA network you can’t use data and voice simultaneously. If you’re broadcasting an internet connection with your Verizon iPhone and someone gives you a call, then the connection goes dead. Like when you were online using dialup and someone called your house.

Pricing for data plans hasn’t been announced yet, but Verizon says they’ll be based on current data plans. Verizon’s current smartphone data plans are $15/month for 150 MB of data or $30 for unlimited. AT&T charges $15/month for 200 MB or $25 for 2 GB; and if you want tethering enabled it’s an additional $20 per month. My guess is that Verizon’s Mobile Hotspot will be free to use with the data plans but the data plan pricing will be a bit higher for the iPhone 4 than they currently are for smartphones.

Lastly, it appears Verizon didn’t do their homework when building their website. The Verizon iPhone info page shows an option for the white iPhone. But it also shows images of the GSM iPhone (you can tell the difference by the antenna line break just above the mute switch — CDMA has one, GSM doesn’t), and it lists the iPhone as being GSM. Whoops. Clearly these are specs and images taken straight from Apple.com. I would be surprised to see a white iPhone available on Verizon on the February 10.

And for those curious, I will not be switching to Verizon. AT&T service in Kansas City is just fine.

Verizon’s iPhone